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Firefox Browser Use Drops As Mozilla's Worst Microsoft Edge Fears Come True
Back in April, we reported that the Edge browser is quickly gaining market share now that Microsoft has transitioned from the EdgeHTML engine to the more widely used Chromium engine (which also underpins Google's Chrome browser). At the time, Edge slipped into the second-place slot for desktop web browsers, with a 7.59 percent share of the market. This dropped Mozilla's Firefox – which has long been the second-place browser behind Chrome – into third place.
Now, at the start of August, we're getting some fresh numbers in for the desktop browser market, and things aren't looking good for Mozilla. Microsoft increased its share of the browser market from 8.07 percent in June to 8.46 percent in July. Likewise, Firefox fell from 7.58 percent to 7.27 percent according to NetMarketShare.
[...] As for Mozilla, the company wasn't too happy when Microsoft first announced that it was going to use Chromium for Edge way back in December 2018. Mozilla's Chris Beard at the time accused Microsoft of "giving up" by abandoning EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium. "Microsoft's decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us," said Beard at the time. "We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice."
[...] Microsoft developer Kenneth Auchenberg fought back the following January, writing, "Thought: It's time for Mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
Is the browser monoculture inevitable or will Firefox hang in there?
Previously:
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share for First Time
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Microsoft Intercepting Firefox, Chrome Installation on Windows 10 Insider Build
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Mozilla Was "Outfoxed" by Google
Microsoft Edge Shares Privacy-Busting Telemetry, Research Alleges
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @04:02PM
You and I were talking about two different things. You explained what Google was doing to make Chrome eat Firefox's market share. I agree with everything you wrote. But my post was about what Mozilla was doing in a desperate and doomed attempt to fight back.
I really believe the Microsoft engineers and managers satisfied with the move from their own rendering engine to Blink think they're doing the right thing. It's absurd, they are letting Google succeed at controlling web standards in a way that Microsoft tried with Internet Explorer and failed.
I hate the bloated web. The task managers built into Chrome and Firefox desktop routinely show javascript-heavy websites I use consuming 200-800 MB of RAM for a single browser tab. The few JS-free sites I use, like sourcehut.org, consume less than 2MB of RAM per tab. However, offline-first Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), in some cases with WebAssembly, seem to be the only chance the world has of breaking free of proprietary software control. If you can do everything on your device that you care about in a browser, then you can jump between MacOS, iOS, Windows, Chrome OS, Android, desktop Linux, desktop *BSD, and so forth with no effort. I don't see any other practical way to protect users from platform lock-in. Microsoft seemed to be actually contributing to this kind of independence for a few years, but I think they've just ceded all of their power to Google.